


If You See Kathy Bates, Run

by meh_guh



Category: Daria (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Fuckbuddies To Lovers, Kidnapping, Stalker, Women Rescuing Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:02:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meh_guh/pseuds/meh_guh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane's getting worried. Mostly about Daria's strange disappearance, but also by her growing feelings for Quinn. Does Quinn feel the same, or is she just using Jane for sex? And can they track Daria down before something happens to her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You See Kathy Bates, Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViolentFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolentFlowers/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, ViolentFlowers! May all your Yule Dreams come true :D Your letter was spectacularly useful and I hope you enjoy what it prompted.
> 
> Title is a reference to the movie Misery.

I was at a gallery opening the first time I twigged something might be going on with Daria. The wine was flowing in fast-running $20-a-bottle rivers, the crab cakes and egg rolls lining the stomachs and handbags of the obligatory starving students hovering around the gallery looking artistically waiflike, and I was holding court in front of one of my pieces. It’d sold within an hour; for enough to cover my costs and then some, so I was relaxed and wandering towards drunk while messing with the tourists. That’s when I saw Daria standing by the staff door and having a furious-looking conversation with one of the wait staff.

She usually puts in an appearance at these things, a quick circuit to show support before she heads back home hoping no one recognised her. The hipster trend’s made her life a bit easier; if everyone’s wearing studiously-ugly clothes and giant nerd glasses her look isn’t such a glaring name tag for the devoted flocks. She’d done the rounds at the start like usual, made a sly aside at me about the number of designer scarves on display, but it was hours later and she shouldn’t have still been there. She certainly shouldn’t have been so obviously worked-up.

I turned to excuse myself to the crowd, but by the time I looked back she was gone again. Frowning, I made a note to call her the next day and check in, but then someone pressed a fresh glass of shiraz into my hand and I went back to work.

****

I got home well after three, high on some excellent sales and my own bodyweight in shiraz, to find my bed already occupied.

‘Pre-e-etty sure I locked the door,’ I told the back of Quinn’s head as I kicked my boots off.

‘You did,’ she said, rolling over with a sigh and throwing her arm up like she was about to start a dramatic monologue. ‘But not the window. I got tired of waiting outside.’

I picked my way between discarded pairs of jeans and the occasional tube of paint to the ensuite. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you tonight.’

She made a sleepy-sounding grumble as I washed my face and brushed my teeth, but she curled around me when I wrestled my way under the covers.

‘Bad day at work,’ she mumbled into my shoulder. ‘I used the last of your bubble bath. You should really consider some higher-end bathroom products, Jane. You have to _spend_ money to make sure great skin keeps on.’

That last part sounded like fashion-beauty blogger autopilot rather than anything looking for a response, though, and sure enough she let out a faint snore before I could reply. I turned my head to take a deep breath of her hair and closed my own eyes too.

****

I woke up with Quinn’s hand inside my panties and her lips against my ear.

‘About time,’ she said, twisting her hand in a really interesting way. ‘I come over for a booty call, I expect orgasms.’

‘That “call” part usually makes sure everyone’s on the same page,’ I said, spreading my legs and turning for a kiss. ‘You can’t blame me for not showing to a date I didn’t know about, Sunshine.’

Quinn pouted and slipped her fingers down further, the edge of her thumbnail an unbelievably good scrape over my clit. She grinned and did it again, slim fingers spreading my lips and slipping inside as I pushed down, trying to get her further inside.

Quinn pressed a kiss to my shoulder, fingers working their steady magic on my cunt. Pleasure built like a tidal wave just visible past the fog of last night’s wine. I shuddered, almost there, and she set her perfect pearly whites against my neck, biting down not quite hard enough to bruise.

I arched off the bed, orgasm crashing through my whole body like the best runner’s high, like the first coffee of the day, like sex with someone who _knew_ you and all your best hot spots.

It took a long few breaths before I came down far enough to open my eyes again. Quinn smirked down at me and very deliberately lifted her hand, shiny with my juices, to her mouth. She licked it clean; a performance art piece complete with fluttering eyelashes and hungry moans.

I groaned and rolled us so I could grind down on her.

She was wearing one of my t-shirts that had started life as one of Trent’s Mystik Spiral merch attempts, cotton worn soft and thin over the years. I grabbed the hem and pulled it up, tugging to make Quinn sit up so I could get it all the way off. I stripped my own shirt off and bent forward to kiss her again, hands hangover-clumsy but eager on her gorgeous breasts.

Quinn made a breathy little whine and hooked a knee around my hips to grind up against me.

We rocked together for a while, both too sleepy for much effort. I dragged my thumbnail over her nipple, pressed down against her like she loved and Quinn came with a happy sigh.

I rolled off to collapse on the mattress again and smirked up at the water stain on my ceiling. Morning sex was great; best treatment ever for the seedy feeling after drinking my bodyweight in Californian grape poison.

Beside me, Quinn stretched; artless this time. No posing for anyone’s benefit, just an indulgent pull of muscles pleasantly-used. I watched, head tipped towards her on the pillow and wondered whether I was in trouble.

Secretly fucking my best friend’s sister was one thing, but falling in love with her would probably be a bad idea. Falling in love with her when she just wanted a booty call while she figured out her sexuality would be disastrous.

I shoved the melancholy feeling away and rolled out of bed. There was a not-too-smelly T-shirt on the floor, so I pulled it on, unbunched my panties and headed into the kitchen to start the coffee.

****

Ever since Daria’s first Melody Powers book had “burst, blood-spattered and unrepentantly vicious into the Millenial zeitgeist, capturing the disaffection and distrust of mainstream politics of a generation” as some scraggle-bearded weirdo had reviewed it in the New York Times, Daria had been progressively even less outgoing than at high school. She’d shown me a few of the weirder emails she’d gotten, ranging from the unhinged to the downright scary. She shrugged them off for the most part, but other than an occasional book signing or convention, she tended to stay home these days unless I dragged her out. Even though we both knew the majority of her fans were harmless, the attention was more than she felt up to. And with the non-zero chance of one of them being genuinely dangerous, Daria tended to stick to her reinforced-doors-and-intruder-alarmed home.

Which was to say, it had been niggling at me that she’d stayed at (or returned to) my opening.

Quinn snuck off after breakfast, a Hermes scarf and oversized Channel sunglasses proving her idea of disguise hadn’t evolved since high school, just gotten more expensive. I watched her climb into a cab and shoot off before I got into my running gear to take a turn past Daria’s house. It was a bit outside my usual route, but I was feeling full of restless energy and mild concern.

It was a brisk Fall day; just cool enough to make me keep my speed up to stay warm, but not freezing. I looped through the local park, turned down Deek Street, and found myself in front of Daria’s house half an hour after Quinn had dashed off.

I pulled my shirt up to wipe my face, then jogged up her front steps to ring the bell.

I could hear the ring echoing in the house, but there was no sign of movement. I pushed the buzzer again after a few minutes, and again a few after that but there was not a sign of life. I cupped my hands over my eyes and peered through the window, checked the street for watchers and jumped into the bushes to go investigate the other windows.

It all looked normal; everything that weirdly-tidy set up all the Morgendorffers liked. But even Daria’s study was empty.

I slumped against the brickwork and frowned at Daria’s professionally-maintained shrubbery. It was probably nothing; even with Skype and Gchat, Daria probably still needed to go to _some_ meetings in meatspace.

I went back to the front door and hammered the bass line for “Spite My Face”, but there was still no answer, unless I counted the neighbour’s dog losing its tiny yapping mind. Reluctantly, I went back to the sidewalk and headed home.

She hadn’t known I was coming. I’d call later to check in.

****

She didn’t answer the phone that night or the next, which was odd but not unheard of if she’d gotten into a writing bender and forgotten to let me know.

It wasn’t until I was halfway through the bottle for our weekly wine-and-grumping date and she hadn’t turned up _or_ cancelled that I let myself panic. I tried ringing six times in a row, every attempt going through to her minimalist voicemail message after eight rings.

In high school, wine-and-grumping had been soda and pizza and almost every day, but when Daria went to Raft and I started at BFAC, it’d dropped to a weekly catch-up. It was a tradition fifteen years strong, which had only been interrupted when we had that falling out over Tom. There had to be something serious making her avoid me, and the only possible explanation I could think of was Daria had found out about me and Quinn.

She’d never had a problem with me dating women, but Daria could be really weird about Quinn even now. Not to mention how much she hated it when people lied to her.

I stared into my glass and swore. Then I picked up my phone and called Quinn.

‘I’m afraid you need to schedule further in advance,’ she said in lieu of a greeting, though her tone was playful. ‘You can’t expect someone as attractive and popular as me to be able to drop _everything_ on a whim. _Especially_ when she’s already stripping off her silk lingerie and eyeing a bottle of massage oil.’

‘Whim’s the only thing you ever listen to,’ I said, half grinning just at the sound of her voice, then I shook myself. ‘Quinn, have you heard from Daria in the last week?’

‘ _Dar-ia_?!’ Quinn made a disgusted noise. ‘No, and I’d like it if you wouldn’t throw me off by mentioning my _sister_ when I’m trying to start a round of phone sex with you!’

‘Tempting as that is,’ and it _was_ ; almost as tempting as calling a cab to head over and join in the fun in person. ‘I’m worried she might have found out about us.’

Quinn’s dramatic grumblings died off suddenly with a shocked-sounding intake of breath. ‘...why do you think that?’

I topped my glass up and glared at the half-finished canvas sitting opposite me. ‘Because the last time she was avoiding me like this was back in high school when she accidentally stole my boyfriend. Daria doesn’t do well with relationship drama.’

‘I don’t see why that means she _knows_ ,’ Quinn protested. ‘She could be angry about something else-’

‘I don’t have a boyfriend for _her_ to steal, _she_ doesn’t have one she might think _I’d_ try to steal, and the only secret I’m keeping from her is you, so.’

Quinn breathed in sharply. I drummed nervous fingers on my knee and waited for her response.

‘I’ll call you back,’ she said eventually, tone strangled and weird.

I rested my phone against my forehead and closed my eyes after she hung up. Quinn made me happy in a twisted-up-from-guilt way, but Daria was my best friend. I felt a gnawing ache in my stomach at the very thought of screwing up either relationship.

I shook myself and checked the time. It was only eight, so I thumbed down to Daria’s mother’s contact.

‘Well, _hello_ Jane!’ she answered, fifteen years having done very little to soften her tone. ‘And it’s Wednesday, does this mean you and Daria are calling to ask me legal advice on Melody’s latest scrape?’

It wouldn’t have been the first time; Daria remained a little awkward but determined to involve her parents in her life. A legal consult from her mother for the next Melody Powers book always worked well to let the two of them talk without _talking_ about it. I usually sat back and made outrageous suggestions for courtroom drama scenes involving evil circus clowns or brainwashed debutantes.

‘Sorry, Helen,’ I said, picking up my wine to take a long sip. ‘I just wanted to ask you if you’d heard from Daria recently? She didn’t show up tonight and her phone just rings out.’

‘Oh,’ Helen always thought so loudly you could _hear_ gears turning. She made a humming noise, flipped through something paper, then laughed. ‘Oh well, you know Daria. She gets so tied up in things, just like her mother. I expect she’s just worked herself into a headache and forgotten to cancel on you.’

I frowned. ‘I went past her house the other day but she wasn’t home. It’s been almost a week since I saw her, Helen. I’m a little worried.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ Helen said, and I heard a distant crash followed by Jake’s trademark exclamation. Helen sighed; the same hard-yet-fond sigh she’d been giving Jake as long as I’d known them. ‘Oh, for- Jane, I’ve got to go. I’m _sure_ Daria’s fine; she probably just has a deadline she needs to meet. **Jake!** _Don’t_ even _try_ to pick that up! You _know_ what the doctor said!’

I killed the call before I could overhear any more of the Morgendorffer Family Slapstick Routine and threw my phone across the room.

Helen had been a long shot, though I would’ve thought thirty would’ve been old enough to get her to take my concerns about her daughter seriously.

I swore as loud as I could and threw myself down on the couch.

****

I got up early the next morning to run past Daria’s house again on the off chance Helen had been right. Daria was an early riser, but even she wouldn’t’ve left the house before six thirty. Maybe I’d be able to catch her off-guard and reason with her.

There was no answer to the bell, though, and one of Daria’s neighbours was hovering in _her_ front yard with a hose so I couldn’t sneak round the back.

‘You’re that friend of hers, aren’t you?’ the neighbour said as I was squinting to try and see past the blinds.

‘I hope so,’ I muttered.

‘Eh?’ the neighbour brandished the hose at me. ‘Speak up, young lady! It’s very rude to mumble when someone asks you a question!’

I pulled a disbelieving face at her.

She narrowed her eyes and turned her attention back to her roses. ‘Hrmph. _Youths_. She’s not home. Hasn’t been in a week.’

I felt a prickle of apprehension up my spine. Daria wasn’t the type to go on a spur-of-the-moment holiday, and Helen should’ve known if she was heading somewhere even if Daria hadn’t wanted to tell me. ‘Are you sure about that?’

The neighbour snorted and turned the hose on the next bush. ‘I don’t exactly get out to paint the town myself. Taxi shot off with her in it Friday evening last weekend and she hasn’t been back since.’

‘Thanks,’ I retreated to the sidewalk and stared at Daria’s empty house.

That was probably Daria leaving the house to come to my opening. I turned and ran home, mind whirling the whole time. Maybe there was something more sinister going on than Daria freaking out about me and Quinn; I could see her holing up in her study more easily than running off who knew where.

I had a class to teach that afternoon, but I had six hours before then to start investigating. I downed a glass of water and called Quinn.

‘ _What?!_ ’ she answered, all early-morning irritation.

I shot a guilty glance at the clock on the microwave. Why is it you forget what time it is once you’re up yourself?

‘Sorry,’ I pushed my sweaty hair away from my face. ‘I think Daria might actually be in trouble.’

‘Trouble?’ Quinn sounded suddenly small. ‘What sort of trouble?’

I didn’t know, but the uneasy feeling was only growing. ‘You have a key to her place, right? Can you meet me there in an hour?’

She agreed, a matching thread of apprehension in her tone too now, and I jumped in the shower.

I really hoped it _was_ just Daria freaking out about me and Quinn.

 

****

Quinn was deep in one of her trademark Perky Popular Girl conversations with Daria’s neighbour when I returned. She peeled away when she saw me, though, and brandished a fluffy pink keyring at me.

‘Dorothy says Daria went on a retreat or something,’ Quinn said, frowning prettily. ‘I can’t imagine Daria doing that.’

I shot Dorothy a fake perky smile of my own and followed Quinn up the steps to Daria’s front door.

Inside, everything looked normal. Daria was always neat and careful with her things, and apart from a faint sour smell from the kitchen there was nothing out of place.

I went to investigate the smell and found a fruit bowl growing mold Trent would’ve balked at. There was no way Daria would’ve left fruit out to go bad.

The bin was half full, too. And most damningly of all, the dishwasher was half full and hadn’t been run. _I_ was known to go off for a week here or there and forget to clean up before I left, but Daria? No way.

‘Jane,’ Quinn yelled from Daria’s bedroom. ‘She hasn’t taken any underwear. And her suitcase is still in her closet.’

I joined Quinn, arms folded as we stared at Daria’s bedroom. This was absolutely not normal.

Quinn looked up, dismay on her face mirroring my own. ‘She really is in trouble, isn’t she?’

****

Of course, life being what it was, the police were less than sold on our concern. I called BFAC to cancel my class and Quinn and I went to the station to report Daria’s disappearance.

Quinn was on top form the whole time; tearful but clear, forceful yet vulnerable, wide-eyed and pleading and calculated to make men do what she wanted. I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling at her.

It had annoyed me profoundly in high school, the way Quinn and her friends would manipulate and trick boys into doing things for them. Daria even more so, but after a few years I’d realised a few things. It wasn’t Quinn’s fault she was so damn attractive, and it was only to her credit that while she’d found the levers to press to make life spit out bonus points and goodies she never used her influence to _hurt_ anyone. If men wanted to buy into the dream, that was all on them. Quinn “needing” them was always an ego boost and she never promised them anything beyond what she gave them.

The desk sergeant delivered us to a detective, asked if Quinn needed a coffee, hovered a moment after she favoured him with a blinding smile then returned to his desk.

Quinn launched into the story, talking too quickly and telling things out of order until the detective held a hand up, a deep frown line between his eyebrows.

‘You think your sister’s… what, exactly?’ he said. ‘Missing? Abducted?’

‘ _Yes_ ,’ Quinn dropped into the visitors’ chair. ‘Something like that, we think.’

‘All right,’ he turned to his computer and pulled up a form document. ‘Let’s start with her name and your names.’

‘Daria Morgendorffer,’ I said, tilting my head to look at the name plate on his desk. ‘She’s Quinn and I’m Jane Lane, Detective Furnez.’

‘Wait,’ Detective Furnez turned his frown on me. ‘Daria _Morgendorffer?_ The writer?’

Quinn nodded and Detective Furnez turned back to his computer, brought up a browser window and went to Daria’s blog. There was a new post, dated two days ago.

‘She’s still updating her blog,’ he said, waving a hand at the screen. ‘Could she maybe have just left for a holiday without telling you?’

Quinn and I made a disbelieving noise in stereo and Detective Furnez’s eyebrows shot up. He turned back to the computer and pulled up another window, did some typing, then grabbed his phone.

‘I’m going to make some calls,’ he said, stabbing the keypad with a pen. ‘Why don’t you ladies take a few minutes in the hall to have some coffee and a breather? Hello? Yes, this is-’

Quinn frowned at the side of Detective Furnez’s face, but he kept talking into the receiver. I snorted and turned to walk towards the coffee machine at the far end of the room. It spurted out a thin, milky liquid that half-filled the cup before making a choking sound and dying. I stared at the slop for a moment, then tipped the whole thing into the drip tray and slumped against the wall to glare at Detective Furnez.

Being patted on the head and sent off while the adults talked wasn’t fun even when I _was_ five. As a full-grown woman with legitimate concerns about her best friend’s safety it was edging into enraging.

Quinn leaned against the wall beside me and pressed her shoulder into mine. ‘This sucks.’

I tipped my head sideways to rest it on Quinn’s shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘It does.’

****

‘Look,’ Detective Furnez said with a shrug half an hour later, having swung past the vending machine to grab a Snickers and picked us up on the way. ‘The bottom line is she’s an adult. She’s still in contact with her publisher, her editor says she went on a short-notice retreat, no one else thinks anything’s hinky. This looks like she just doesn’t want to speak to either of _you_ for the moment, which I understand is rough but is absolutely her right.’

‘But-’ Quinn started, anger coming to the surface for the first time.

‘I hope you sort it out, ladies,’ he continued. ‘I really do, but maybe she just needs a few weeks to cool down from whatever you said or did to each other. Which, unless she gave you some info about something relating to a crime, is none of my business. Have a good day.’

‘Hey!’ I started when he turned away, but Quinn grabbed my elbow before I could get up in his smug, patronising face.

‘Come on, Jane,’ she said, hand slipping down my forearm to link our fingers. ‘We’ll try Mom again.’

I let Quinn drag me out of the station and into a cab, where she gave Daria’s address.

Our hands stayed tangled the whole journey; a grounding comfort as the driver kept trying to start a conversation with us.

‘OK,’ Quinn said as the now-cranky driver sped off. ‘If the police won’t help us, we’ll have to find out what’s happened to Daria ourselves.’

She was right. If we found something tangible, maybe the cops would pay more attention but until then we were on our own.

I followed her back inside, where we split up to go through the house to look for clues.

It felt creepy and wrong to be rifling through Daria’s stuff, but what else were we supposed to do? I went straight for Daria’s office, but her laptop was gone. I looked around the room, but nothing seemed to be out of place apart from the missing laptop.

Daria kept her office just as neat and orderly as the rest of the house, so it was quick work checking the room for any hints. I could hear Quinn stifling disgusted noises as she went through Daria’s closet, but then I started on the desk drawers and found one of them was locked.

None of the other drawers in the room were locked; even Daria’s filing cabinet (she was so painfully old school sometimes) was unlocked.

‘Quinn!’ I looked for something I could use to force the drawer open, promising I’d replace the whole damn desk if Daria really was just on a retreat. ‘Can you find a crowbar or something?!’

Quinn poked her head around the door frame to raise her eyebrows at me. ‘You think Daria has a _crowbar_?’

‘Something to pry the drawer open,’ I snapped at her, and Quinn handed me a breadknife.

I slid the blade into the drawer and wrenched it, snapping the knife in half and busting the lock into splinters in one victorious twist. I pulled the drawer out and found it full of letters, carefully ordered by date and with post-its in Daria’s handwriting adding extra information.

Quinn dropped to her knees beside me and we went through the letters, me passing each of them to her as I finished reading.

Several of the letters were print outs of comments on her blog, or emails, but mostly they were old-fashioned snail mail. They started out the normal sort of creepy Daria’s fans often hit when writing to her; declarations they wanted to lick her brain or build a nest in her attic or whatever creative “compliment” the weirdo in question thought Daria would respond to. But as we went deeper into the pile, Daria’s notes got more detailed and the letters got stranger. By the time the writer had spent three pages promising retaliation for Daria getting them banned from Melodycon, I felt like there were ants crawling under my skin.

‘Francine Holzner,’ Quinn read from the back of one of the early envelopes. ‘OK, she is _completely_ unhinged. I thought _I_ got creepy fanmail, but even Unsettling Douglas has nothing on this girl!’

I abandoned reading the letters and dug through to the most recent to check the envelopes. There was a return address written neatly on the back and it was only on the other side of town. I held it up to show Quinn, stomach roiling as I tried not to think about what Francine had been promising to do to Daria.

Quinn took the envelope, mouth thinning, then she pulled her phone out and flicked through the contacts to order a cab.

‘So we’re doing this?’ I asked, setting the letters back in the broken drawer. ‘Rather than calling the cops?’

Quinn raised an eyebrow. ‘Daria’s been missing for a _week_ and they didn’t care. We can call them in once we’ve found her, but I’m not waiting for them to believe us.’

I grinned, dragged her in for a kiss and fell in love with her all over again.

****

Quinn handed the cabbie a twenty and told him to scram when we pulled up. We waited until his tail lights turned the corner before I followed Quinn up to Francine Holzner’s front door. I rang the bell and stepped to one side as Quinn slipped a hand into her bag.

We waited, tense and almost certainly heading for felony charges ourselves, until the door opened.

Francine, assuming it was her, was tall and thin and dressed in brand name track pants. Very pretty, but a kind of ugly look about the eyes. That was as far as I got before Quinn nailed her with a taser, before Francine could even ask what we wanted.

She went down with a really satisfying thump and Quinn stepped over her twitching body without looking back. I followed her inside the house and leaned in to ask how she was certain she’d got the right girl.

‘I followed her instagram to make sure on the ride over,’ Quinn said, opening a door and poking her head inside. ‘And really, Francine would’ve been better off stalking _me_ , Jane. She has _no idea_ about proper make up application, _appalling_ fashion sense and no idea how to take a selfie.’

I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her again, then I peeled off to start checking rooms on the other side of the house.

Next to the kitchen I found a door that opened on a set of stairs down to a basement. Tingling with apprehension and fear, I called Quinn and started down the steps.

At the bottom, I almost cried in relief. Daria was there, she was _there_ , lying on a camp bed with her wrists tied together over her head.

‘If you didn’t want to listen to me talk about my students,’ I said, voice almost steady. ‘You could’ve just cancelled wine and grump. You didn’t need to go to all this effort.’

‘I thought you could do with a little excitement,’ Daria replied. ‘Though my arms are cramping, so I’d like it if you untied me now. Please.’

‘Pfft,’ I spied a pair of shears on a work table and brought them over. ‘Cramping after only a week? Where’s your stamina, Morgendorffer?’

‘Left it in my _other_ kidnapping,’ she twisted her hands to give me room for the shears and pulled the rope off as soon as it was cut, breath coming a little fast as she sat up. ‘Which, as far as I was aware, is a federal crime. I was expecting you to send the police after me, not to Nancy Drew it yourself.’

I scowled. ‘We tried, but Whacko upstairs had been posting things on your blog so they didn’t believe you were in any trouble.’

‘“We”?’ Daria stood up, legs a little shaky, but before I could answer her, Quinn thundered down the stairs, coming to a stop with her shoulder brushing mine. I felt my face heat a little at the contact, but shoved it to one side.

‘ _Daria_ ,’ Quinn put her hands on her hips and glared. ‘Stalkers are _my_ area. Stop _copying_ me!’

Daria blinked, face open and vulnerable for once. ‘Quinn? What are you doing here?’

Quinn rolled her eyes and pressed her elbow into mine. ‘Same as Jane, duh.’

Daria’s narrowed her eyes and she glanced between us, then her eyes widened. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Uh…’ I felt myself blush. ‘No?’

I glanced to the side and found Quinn turning pink as well. I decided to throw caution to the wind and slipped my hand into Quinn’s. Her fingers curled around mine and she ducked her head to give the floor a pleased grin.

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Daria muttered. ‘OK, I approve so long as we do three things: first, get me out of this house. Second, call the police and get Francine sent to a psychiatric facility. Third, _never_ tell me _any_ details of _any_ kind.’

‘You got yourself a deal, Morgendorffer,’ I threw an arm around her shoulders to give her a quick hug, then we acted on Daria’s demands. Luckily, Francine was still out and drooling into her welcome mat, so I shooed Daria out onto the lawn while Quinn produced some duct tape from her bag.

‘Kinky,’ I said, looping the tape around Francine’s hands behind her back. Quinn smirked and gave me a wink, then put the call in to 911.

‘Hey,’ I brushed some stray hairs behind her ear after she’d hung up. ‘You wanna do something other than blazing hot sex some time?’

‘Like a date?’ Quinn’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m not a cheap date you know. _Especially_ if we’re exclusive.’

I grinned and put my hands on her waist, ignoring Daria’s affronted snort. ‘Can I get a frequent dater discount card?’

‘I’m sure we can work something out,’ Quinn said, then she leaned in to kiss me.

****

‘She tied me to a chair and fed me dinner,’ Daria said the next night, after apologetic detectives had taken our statements and the hospital had checked her thoroughly over. ‘It was the worst stroganoff I’ve ever eaten.’

‘Strong words from an alum of the Jake Morgendorffer Institute of Culinary Warfare,’ I topped her wine up and nudged a bowl of goldfish crackers towards her. ‘Why didn’t you report her three dozen super creepy letters ago?’

‘I wish I had,’ Daria sipped her wine and frowned at her lap. ‘But I never thought she’d actually do anything. And it seemed cruel to send the authorities after someone with her sorts of problems.’

I poked her with my socked foot. ‘Hey. I’ll always come for you when you need me. Though, in fairness, it was _Quinn_ who brought the taser.’

Daria huffed a laugh and raised her glass. ‘To my real life Melody Powers: my deranged sister.’

‘Hey, be careful!’ I grinned and clinked the toast. ‘That’s my girlfriend you’re trash-talking!’

‘Urgh,’ Daria dropped her head back on the couch. ‘I thought I told you to not.’

‘Fat chance,’ I raised a triumphant fist. ‘We’re family now; it’s in the contract to torture you.’

Daria let out a pained groan, and just like that everything was back to (better than) normal.


End file.
